bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • “What don’t we know?”

    The journal Science has published a list of the top 125 unanswered questions.  The link takes you to a list of the editors’ top 25, with links to essays; here are the remaining 100.  A selection:

    What is a species?

    How did flowers evolve?

    Why do some countries grow and others stagnate?

    Does Poincare’s test identify spheres in four-dimensional space?

    To what extent can we stave off Alzheimer’s?

    What powers quasars?

    Are we alone in the universe?

    Some of them are really "what can’t we do yet" rather than "what don’t we know."

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  • The baby fell in the fire.

    Not my baby, my friends’ baby.  Three families went camping, we among them, and on the last morning after breakfast, not ten minutes after we’d all agreed that the trip was a resounding success, fifteen-month-old Finnian backed towards the smoldering fire ring; three or four adults yelled "Finnian!"; he jerked his head up; and the momentum knocked him off balance and he tumbled butt-first into the fire.

    The next instant stretched on and on as people were reaching and grabbing and pulling him out; it seemed long enough for me, several meters away, to think He’s in the fire, pull him out and then to think He’s still in the fire, why isn’t anyone pulling him out? and then to think He’s still in the fire, he has to come out! But of course it was only a couple of seconds.  And then he was in someone’s arms, and someone, inexplicably, was beating Finnian on the side of the head with a hat, and then it seemed that everyone was shouting, "Water! Water!" and the bucket was empty, and then someone was holding him under the pitifully thinly streaming spigot of our collapsible drinking water container, and then two of the men were running away with him, away down the two-hundred-foot path to the potable-water faucet, and his mother was running behind.  And he screamed and he screamed and he screamed.

    It turned out okay in the end.  His ear was blistered and the edges of the peeling blisters blackened.  His hair was singed (that was why he had been beaten with the hat, of course) and the skin was reddened.  After holding him under the faucet for many minutes, his mother took him into her lap and nursed him, and we viewed it as a good sign that he stopped screaming and nursed and calmed.   While he nursed we could inspect and treat the burns we could see.  And then one of the men drove Finnian and his mother to the emergency room and the rest of us started to pack up, talking and talking and thinking how much worse it could have been.  When they returned a couple of hours later, Finnian ran down the path himself.  His head was bandaged and he also had a bandage on his arm (we hadn’t noticed the burn on his arm) but he seemed to have forgotten all about it.

    So here’s what went wrong, and here’s what went right.  Wrong first:

    • Immediate cause:  The camp chairs were too close to the fire.  After the children went to bed the night before, the adults stayed up and drew the chairs close around the fire.  We’d never put them back, and when Finnian fell he’d been directly between the fire and the feet of an adult seated in one of the chairs.   
    • Possibly more important:  We hadn’t worked very hard at keeping the two toddlers aware of the fire.  On previous trips we’d been very vigilant, yanking them away whenever they came near and constantly reminding them "Hot! Hot!"  (Enough so that last year, my then-eleven-month-old started to say "Hot!").  This year, with eight children to keep track of, and none of them ever burned, we got complacent about the fire, even though we were vigilant about the unusually abundant poison ivy and ticks.  These hazards seemed new and interesting; the campfire, not so much.
    • We didn’t even catch the cues we were giving each other.  We kept pointing out to each other, "Wow, Finnian keeps getting really close to the fire.  He doesn’t understand it at all."  We kept making jokes about having to file near-miss reports.  And yet, only once the whole trip did anyone try to teach him about it.

    Mistakes we made that might have made it much worse, but luckily, didn’t:

    • We didn’t have a lot of water handy.  We’d given up on keeping a full bucket of water around because the children kept tipping it over and we were worried about one of them falling in.
    • We didn’t know where the closest emergency room was.  They drove him to the nearest town that they guessed would have a hospital, and luckily they were right; and time was not terribly important in this case, but it might’ve been.

    What went right, that might not have:

    • Finnian was fully dressed except for shoes.  Our little ones aren’t always.  I know my toddler was walking around in nothing but a diaper a few times during the trip.
    • We had three fully stocked first-aid kits, one of which contained a wilderness-first-aid manual.
    • We got him out of the fire very fast, we knew to apply cold water immediately and for a long time (five to fifteen minutes), and Finnian’s dad thought to run the water over Finn’s entire body instead of just the area that seemed burned.  That was smart, because he did have other burns that didn’t turn red until later.

    We resolved to buy a water bucket with a lid, to get some spray chalk to mark a Toddler Exclusion Circle (i.e. if they go inside it we yank them out) around the campfire, to forbid the girls from wearing dresses while camping, and to keep the babies fully dressed.  Of all the things that might’ve gone wrong, I am most haunted by the thought that Finnian might not have had two layers of clothes on.

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  • How often does this happen?

    All along I’d been (naively) assuming that Terri’s case was some kind of first, at least on the national scene.  But no:

    Marjorie had once told her brother Maynard that she didn’t want a feeding tube if she were terminally ill. Despite the fact that she was not dying, Maynard believed that she had meant that she would rather die by dehydration than live the rest of her life using a feeding tube. Accordingly, he ordered all of Marjorie’s nourishment stopped.

    As she was slowly dehydrating to death, Marjorie began to beg the staff for food and water.

    The Washington Post reports that someone at the hospital restrained her in her bed to prevent her from grabbing food from other patients’ plates until she finally died.

    This was in 1996.  Hat tip: this week’s Grand Rounds.

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  • A wrapup on Terri.

    A good article to keep in mind, with some new material.  By Robert Johansen.  H/T Bettnet.

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  • One more reason why “Footprints” is not the same as the Gospels.

    Food for thought from Disputations:

    It’s kind of strange, isn’t it, how a familiar passage doesn’t become dull so much as silent. They don’t tell you what you already know; they simply don’t tell you anything at all. And of course there are passages that are silent from first reading on.

    And then… pop!

    This caught my eye because the process of coming to terms with "Footprints in the Sand" happened to me too.  For years I was somewhat ashamed of my thunderstruckness on my first reading, because after I discovered how ubiquitous it is on cheap "inspirational" plaques and samplers I started to regard it as treacle. 

    Which, of course, it is, compared to Scripture.   But then, so is a lot of stuff.

    Hat tip:  Emily at After Abortion.

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  • Smart kid, close call (UPDATED)

    This, in my local paper, is the sort of thing that makes my heart skip a beat:

    The two boys told police that they noticed a man watching them as they played at an apartment building playground in the 1000 block of Duluth Street. Shortly before 6:40 p.m., the man grabbed the younger boy by the arm and started to walk off to a wooded area, police said. The older boy, 9, yelled and threw rocks until the man let go.

    Last summer I had a suspicious impulse towards a man who approached my four-year-old son at a playground, and stared him down until he walked away.  (Short version:  Lone man walking dog, ten o’clock on a weekday morning, starts conversation with small boys playing in an isolated corner of the playground.) 

    I know this sort of thing is very rare, but not rare enough for me to let a boy this age play unsupervised in a public place.

    UPDATE:  OK, so it’s even rarer than that.  The boys have admitted to lying.

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  • Maggie hits it on the head.

    Fabulous essay by Maggie Gallagher in the NCR.  It’s in the form of a letter explaining love and marriage to her grown son Patrick.

    Here’s the place to begin. Every time you make love, you could be making your first-born child…

    The fate of your first child will lie in the hands of this woman to whom you give the perhaps unwelcome gift of your seed. Afterwards, our society gives you no say in what happens next: whether she kills your baby, or bears it away from you, or asks for your help raising it in a quasi-family, one where love, money, sexual attachments, and parenting are split up among multiple people and households.

    If you are lucky perhaps she will secretly long for you to propose marriage. But you lose control. What happens next will be up to her, not you.

    Your capacity to protect your own child will depend entirely on the woman to whom you have made love. You have placed your fatherhood in her hands.

    (My son, here’s a secret: Fatherhood is always the gift of a woman).

    Read it all.  Hat tip:  Sara Butler at familyscholars.org.

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  • Scientists Say

    Mark was leafing through last week’s issue of Science at the breakfast table.  "This is a weird magazine."

    I said, "It’s really a journal, even though it looks like a trade mag.  It’s fairly prestigious to be published in there." 

    "Yeah, it looks like one in the back."  He pushed it across the table and pointed to the Letters page (link requires paid subscription).  "Is it prestigious to get your retraction published?"

    The report "Defective transcription-couped repair of oxidative base damage in Cockayne syndrome patients from XP group G" (1) is retracted.  An ad hoc investigatory committee … has found that the last author (S. A. L.) of the paper "fabricated and falsified research findings"… The first three authors of the paper were not cognizant of any irregularities and were not involved in any wrongdoing.  The fourth author (S. A. L.) declined to sign this retraction.

    I don’t know how often papers are formally retracted because fake data is uncovered.  Retraction because mistakes are discovered is a normal part of the process, or at least it should be, because mistakes happen all the time.

    A year out of graduate school, I suspect fakery is very, very common, especially if you include the omission of data along with fabrication and falsification.  I suspect that it falls on a spectrum:  at one end, the deliberate creation of data that never existed, reports from experiments that were not done or that turned out quite differently; at the other end, decisions to omit certain data and report others that are rooted in unconscious bias.  Somewhere in there, too, obfuscation or exaggeration in the write-ups.

    A lot of people are suspicious of university research that is funded by corporations with a stake in the findings.  Supposedly this creates an incentive for the investigator to skew the data in favor of the funding corporation.  Maybe that’s true at the level of the primary investigator, i.e. the supervising professor. 

    In my experience, it’s not true for the graduate students who do most of the research, at least not in physical science and engineering.  What do they care who funds them as long as they get their stipend? 

    No, with graduate students the incentive is all about time.  I’ve been here seven years and I don’t have anything to show for it.  If this keeps up they’ll kick me out.  As soon as I finish this up and get something—anything—that will look good to the thesis committee, I’ll be making real money. 

    Or maybe it goes like this:  Everyone else in my group finishes within five years.  I’m starting to look bad.  My advisor is pressuring me to finish.

    My own thesis was theoretical; the "data" came from one computer program I wrote myself, and later from another computer program that a visiting professor, who is much better at programming than I am, wrote after I set up the equations.  (Yes, I properly attributed the work to the professor.)  Mine has nothing but my own reasoning to stand on.  That’s one thing I like about theoretical investigation.

    UPDATE:  Here’s a link to a news article on the retraction.  Sounds like the alleged faker has issues that go beyond research.

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  • In other news: Pope Catholic

    What were they thinking he would say?

    ROME, Italy (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI indicated Saturday he will stick to Pope John Paul II’s unwavering stands against abortion and euthanasia, saying pontiffs must resist attempts to "water down" Roman Catholic teaching.

    Also:  These are not "Pope John Paul II’s… stands." Such a phrase assumes that the popes are only politicians, and their comments about abortion and euthanasia are only party lines of one kind or another.  These are teachings that have been continuously upheld since the time of the apostles.  It’s not like JPII came up with them on his own. 

    But it fits with the MSM meme:  church as political party.

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  • Michelangelo

    From the L. A. Times:

    Throughout the two-day conclave, Mahony said, he and other cardinals were moved by the fact that they were participating in a historic event in the dramatic setting of the Sistine Chapel, adorned with paintings of damnation and salvation by Michelangelo, including the "Last Judgment."

    "I kept looking up at all the paintings, at Michelangelo’s works, and thought, the only thing that stayed the same in this room is everything that Michelangelo painted here."

    He said that as he and others studied the artworks, it occurred to them that the message of the paintings was timeless and as relevant in the 21st century as they were when they were made in the 16th century.

    I like the idea that Michelangelo is the messenger chosen from among all the people of God to remind the cardinals why they are there; what it means to Feed my sheep. 

    This is what we need, says Michelangelo.  Let me show you what the stakes are.

    He is the ordinary person’s representative in the conclave.

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  • OY

    Ah, the Associated Press:

    For some Israelis, the new pope’s condemnation of abortion, same-sex marriage and his embrace of other conservative stands has raised concerns of closed-mindedness — an attitude they fear may be connected to residual anti-Semitism.

    Does anybody actually read this stuff anymore?  Since when is one’s opinion of the meaning of marriage "connected to residual anti-Semitism?" 

    I wonder how ordinary Germans, seventy and older, are reacting to this  "socially conservative German = Nazi" fantasy.

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  • Terri and the Law

    I want to clarify my posts on Terri somewhat.

    Do I think it’s wrong to starve her to death?  Absolutely.  And I have no doubt that’s actually what’s going on:  she is being deliberately killed, and the instrument of her murder is the intentional withholding of food and water for no other purpose than to bring about her death.

    It’s wrong.  Absolutely wrong.

    Is it legal?

    Yes.  It’s legal.

    Unjust laws must be opposed; indeed we have both the right and the duty to oppose them. 

    Speech is the most important tool of opposition. 

    Civil disobedience is another well-worn tool, and Americans are rightly proud of its history in our country.  That’s why I admire the protesters who are  deliberately getting themselves arrested for the crime of carrying cups of water across police lines; yes, even the ones who are getting their children involved (assuming the children understand what they are getting into).  If it is good to bring children to any political protest at all—and I’ve seen them at many—it is certainly good to bring them to this one. 

    The most formal measure: lawsuits brought by individuals challenging the application of law in a particular case.  That’s what the courts are for.  And that’s why I don’t fault the Schindler family for grasping at the wispiest of legal straws in their effort to save their daughter. 

    But even though unjust laws must be opposed, at the same time it’s an understandable and defensible position for someone charged with carrying out the law to say "I wish I could do more, but I have to follow that law."  So I can’t fault Jeb Bush either here, at least not at this stage in the game.  (Do I think he should order an autopsy if Terri dies?  Heck yes.)

    The rules of the game have already been laid down.  The moral battle for Terri’s life was lost when Florida included tube-delivered food and water in the list of "medical treatments" that a guardian may withdraw from a ward without prior authorization.  I doubt that most of the legislators intended direct euthanasia when they wrote the law, but the law certainly wasn’t written carefully enough to exclude it.  Terri’s might be the death that prompts legislators in Florida and other states to prevent future euthanizations-by-starvation by repealing that and similar provisions.  Or not; even though I think it’s obvious that a ventilator is a medical treatment and a feeding tube is basic nursing care, no more artificial than a baby’s bottle, perhaps the general public will never be persuaded to see it like this.  Perhaps the general public really does want to be given the choice to be euthanized, or rather, the possibility of being euthanized without being given a choice.

    (I can still try to persuade them.  Should a guardian be able to order that her diapers remain unchanged, so that she lies in her own menstrual blood, excrement and urine?  Should he be able to order that no one turn her, so that her bedsores fester to the bone?  Should he be able to order that no one clean her teeth, or brush her hair, or trim her fingernails?  If not any of these things, then how, how, how can it be acceptable to order that no one feed her or give her water?)

    The other part of the rules of the game, of course, is the guardianship.  I’m glad that a presumptive guardian exists.  I’m even glad that it’s the husband, and not the parents; goodness, I hope no one, especially my "just shoot me in the head" dad, ever wrenches custody of me away from my spouse should I become disabled.  But custody can be lost, of course.  Even parents can quickly lose custody of their children, sometimes with little or no due process:  all it takes is for a court to find it in the "best interests" of the children.  A court.  And that’s the way the law is written.  Huge power to decide custody battles rests in the hands of judges and judges alone, on a case-by-case basis.

    And that’s what happened here.  And that’s why Michael Schiavo is caring for Terri Schiavo:  a judge had to believe it was in Terri’s best interest, and that it continued to be in Terri’s best interest.  Ultimately, that it is more in her interest to be starved to death than to be fed and cared for.

    What’s the guardianship law in your state?

    What’s the living-will law in your state?

    If there’s a problem with either, now—when everyone has Terri on their minds—is the time to change it.

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